How to find the words to say
by Inherently Flawed
Summary: Ziva has killed in five languages, but only loved in two. This is mostly about Ziva, with tiny mentions of Tony.


Disclaimer: Not it.

Author's note: This is set absolutely nowhere except after Ziva shows up. It's been sitting on my computer for literally years, and I just found it and realized it was so close to done that I might as well finish it and put it up.

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By the time she is three, she can speak one language, and she doesn't shut up. She follows her big brother around the house, around the park, around his life, reveling in the slightest of attentions from him. She idolizes Ari and cannot wait to be let into the mysterious world he shares with their father. She doesn't know what causes his hugs to be stronger, his body firmer, his eyes darker, but she knows she wants to be a part of whatever this thing is that two people she loves so much share without her.

By the time she is six, she can speak two languages, and has a baby sister who toddles after her, giggling all the while. Sometimes it is annoying, but she feels as much affection for little Tali as she does admiration for big Ari. Her father has let her into their secret club, taught her how to kick and punch and sweep legs with good form. Ari is 10. He often goes out with their father and comes back smelling of what she will soon learn to recognize as gunpowder.

By the time she is 12, she can speak three languages, and has lost her best friend in a hotel bombing. Tali comes into her room, hairbrush and barrettes in hand, then drops them and climbs into her sister's bed and hugs her tightly. Ari is a worldly old man of 16. He is Mossad now, a pillar of strength and brutal efficiency. He is angry now, too. She can see it but doesn't understand the pain he feels to see Tali, still so young and bright, and to see herself, quickly turning so dark.

By the time she is 18, she can speak four languages, and has left her beloved sister an only child at home in order to take part in the Mossad rite of passage. She is so confused and disillusioned with her father and brother now that a year away is probably a good thing. She rarely hears from Ari, scattered letters and phone calls which say nothing. She is glad that her father recognized that Tali was not destined for a life in Mossad, so at least one of them can grow up happy. She knows 13 ways to kill a man with a paperclip, she can shoot moving targets from 200 meters away with deadly accuracy, and she has learned how to use sex as a tool and a weapon. Many nights, though, she thinks she would forgo all of these things to cuddle and gossip with Tali again.

By the time she is 21, she can speak five languages, and has lost her baby sister. She does not stop to grieve until three months later, when she has done everything in her power to kill anyone she can link to Tali's last moments. She finally hears from Ari. They meet in Edinburough and talk for hours. He is different, but still her older brother, whom she still can't help but turn to when she feels lost.

By the time she is 26, she is halfway through a sixth language when she realizes that Russian simply opens up more countries in which she can kill people. For the first time, she is unsure of how she feels about this. Traversing Europe with Jenny, she thinks that perhaps five is enough. She has grown closer to Ari and farther from her father and has made a new friend in Agent Shepard.

By the time she is 29, she has killed her brother, and marvels abstractly at the level of her defiance – not learning Russian – compared to his. It had been so long since she has carried her real name, her own passport, that she found herself revealing her most personal secret to a complete stranger just to remind herself of who she is. Almost as soon as she does, she finds that who she is has changed. By the time she is 29, she is an only child who can barely speak at all. Kneeling over her brother's body, her first language trails out brokenly in prayer.

By the time she is 30, she realizes she only thought she knew English. Tony DiNozzo has set her straight on that, correcting every fumbled idiom, every slip of the tongue. She finds it annoying, because the exact wording is not important when he can obviously understand what she means. But secretly, she also likes it. She appreciates that someone is invested enough to bother, and she likes that it matters. Learning idioms feels like permanence to her, because it means she is staying long enough to need them.

By the time she is 32, she speaks five and a half languages, peppered with handfuls of phrases from dozens more. She has bought and traded secrets among them, and killed people in all of them. She can order coffee in dozens of countries, but not as many as she can buy a gun or order a hit in. Five languages, all of which came easily to her. She has killed people in all of them, but she's only loved people in two of them. As a child, she loved her family in Hebrew, the words spilling in a rush from her lips at night, when she would hang up the phone or board a plane. As an adult, she loves her friends in English, at Chrismakkah celebrations, at birthday parties. And for one, she loves him when she hangs up the phone; when she boards a plane; when she signs a card; when she says goodbye; when she falls asleep and when she wakes up. But with all of her words, she cannot find the ones to say to tell him.

Sometimes at night, the words choke her, so many words that she cannot remember which belong to whom. They tangle accents and alphabets, and half-asleep, she murmurs them all in a row until she digs deep and finds the ones she is looking for. She practices in the dark, trying the feel of them on her tongue. She works her way up to them.

"Ani ohevet otcha," she drops in passing. He tells her that if she's going to speak languages he doesn't understand, he'll start up with the Italian.

"Ana behibak," she murmurs into the skin of his shoulder. He thinks she's complaining in Hebrew that he's hogging the covers.

"Je t'aime," she whispers as they fall asleep. "Nearly midnight," he mumbles back.

"Te amo," she states, "even when you are drunk and gross and will not remember it."

But her practice is for naught. Because when the moment comes, five languages, 32 years, dozens dead and betrayed, accents and alphabets don't matter. She doesn't have to think about it. He is here, right here, and so are the words. "I love you, Tony."


End file.
